In general, the present invention relates to portable support stands, such as those used for supporting a camera, survey equipment, telescope, holiday trees, as well as printed sheet music stands—all of which utilize multiple legs (most often in a tripod style) to support a specifically identified article for which the stand has been designed. While many of the current stand designs provide a certain basic amount of stability, each of these stands is quite limited in that each is designed to support the item for which it was specifically designed. Furthermore, most all of these traditional stand designs cannot be set up on ground that is not planar and level; few of these conventional designs provide much, if any, support when a gust of wind or inclement weather hits (heavy wind, rain, etc.); and in most-every case, traditional stand designs are suitable for use to support a single article.
As one will readily appreciate in connection with the instant technical disclosure, applicant has designed a unique portable, collapsible, multi-purpose structure having at least three leg assemblies, each of which has an adjustable length that pivotally interconnects at least one upper support member with one lower support member, for use to support a wide variety of items/articles in a wide variety of environments. More-particularly applicant's invention is directed to a structure having multiple leg assemblies pivotally secured to extend from upper and lower support members. Each leg assembly is of a variable-length style, whereby at least first and second elongated subassemblies are paired and. interconnected by a hinge-fitting; at least one of the subassemblies being adjustable in length. The hinge-fitting mechanism is adapted to permit a pivot range, preferably this can be up to ˜90-degress to up to nearly 180 degrees of rotation, through which the hinge-fitting may be rotated to allow for handy adaptation to uneven ground (various configurations of the unique apparatus of the invention may be achieved) as well as for collapsing the structure to facilitate transport and storage between use. Each hinge-fitting mechanism is adapted with appropriate stabilizing, gripping/frictional, rolling-frictional, etc. means to aid in balance as well as positioning, or repositioning, of the structure in use. An upper-end of each leg assembly is pivotally secured to and extends from the upper support member in a symmetrical fashion; likewise, a lower-end of each leg assembly is symmetrically pivotally secured to extend from the lower support member.
One can readily appreciate the many fundamental distinguishing features of the instant invention from conventional tripod-type and unipod-type camera stands such as those distributed by Davis & Sanford; and taught in U.S. Pat. No. 4,196,881 issued 8 Apr. 1980 to Davidson; U.S. Pat. No. 6,454,228 B1 issued 24 Sep. 2002 to Bosnakovic, “Portable Vertical Support;” and U.S. Pat. No. 6,375,135 B1 issued 23 Apr. 2002 to Eason, et al. entitled “High Strength Engineered Collapsible Tripod.”